The Frozen Dead

by Bernard Minier

Distracted, Servaz thought he had heard a confession, until he understood that she was saying just the opposite: she hadn’t killed him, although she had reason to do so. He had rarely seen so much coldness and hostility concentrated in a single person. Such arrogance and detachment was disconcerting. For a moment he did not know quite how to behave. They would have to dig further into the life of the Grimms – but he wondered if now was the right time.

  ‘Why did you feel scorn for him?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘You said your husband was an imbecile. What gives you the right to say that?’

  ‘I ought to know, of all people, don’t you think?’

  ‘Please be more exact.’

  She was on the verge of saying something unpleasant. But then her gaze met Servaz’s and she thought better of it. She exhaled more smoke, and then with a gesture of mute defiance said, ‘My husband studied to become a chemist because he was too lazy and stupid to be a doctor. He bought the pharmacy thanks to his parents, who had a prosperous business. It’s a good location, right in the centre of Saint-Martin. And yet, because of his laziness, because he simply didn’t have what it takes, he never managed to make the shop turn a profit. There are six pharmacies in Saint-Martin. His had the fewest customers by far; people only went there as a last resort, or by chance: tourists who were walking by and needed something. Even I didn’t trust him when I needed medicine.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you get a divorce?’

  She sniggered.

  ‘Can you see me starting life over at my age? This house is big enough for two. We each had our own territory, and we avoided getting in each other’s way as much as possible. Besides, I’m often away for work. That makes … made things easier.’

  Servaz thought of a legal expression in Latin: Consensus non concubitus facit nuptias. ‘Consent, not consummation, makes the marriage.’

  ‘Every Saturday evening he had his poker games,’ he said, turning to the mayor. ‘Who else took part?’

  ‘It was me and a few friends,’ answered Chaperon, ‘as I already told the captain.’

  ‘Who was there yesterday evening?’

  ‘Serge Perrault, Gilles and me.’

  ‘Are they your usual partners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you play for money?’

  ‘Yes, small amounts. Or for restaurant meals. He never signed any IOUs, if that’s what you’re thinking. And anyway, Gilles often won: he was a very good player,’ he added, looking in the widow’s direction.

  ‘Did anything in particular happen during that game?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. An argument…’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you playing?’

  ‘At Perrault’s place.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Gilles and I left together, as usual. Then Gilles went on his way and I went home to bed.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything on the way back? You didn’t run into anyone?’

  ‘No, not that I can recall.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary recently?’ Ziegler asked Nadine Grimm.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he seem worried, anxious?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did your husband have anything to do with Éric Lombard?’

  She looked at them, not understanding. Then there was a brief spark in her eyes. She crushed her cigarette against the railing and smiled.

  ‘You think there’s a connection between my husband’s murder and that horse business? That’s absurd!’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  She sniggered again.

  ‘Why would someone like Lombard waste his time with a loser like my husband? No. Not that I know of.’

  ‘Do you have a photograph of your husband?’

  ‘What for?’

  Servaz nearly lost it, forgetting that she had only been a widow for a few hours. But he restrained himself.

  ‘I need a photograph for the investigation,’ he replied. ‘If you have several, that would be even better. As recent as possible.’

  He met Ziegler’s gaze briefly and she understood: the severed finger. Servaz hoped that the signet ring would be visible in one of the photographs.

  ‘I don’t have any recent photographs. And I don’t know where he put the older ones. I’ll have a look through his things. Anything else?’

  ‘Not for the moment,’ said Servaz, getting to his feet.

  He felt chilled to the bone, and wanted simply to get out of there as fast as possible. He wondered if that was why the widow Grimm had seated them out on the terrace, to encourage them to leave. Anxiety and cold were twisting his guts, for he had noticed something that pricked him like a needle, a detail he alone had seen: when Nadine Grimm reached out to crush her cigarette on the railing, the sleeve of her jumper had slid up … Gaping, Servaz had clearly seen the little white ridges of several scars on her bony wrist: the woman had tried to end it all.

  As soon as they were in the car he turned to the mayor. A thought had occurred to him while he was listening to the widow.

  ‘Did Grimm have a mistress?’

  ‘No,’ said Chaperon without hesitating.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The mayor gave him a strange look.

  ‘You can never be one hundred per cent sure. But as far as Grimm is concerned, I’d stake my life on it. He wasn’t the sort with anything to hide.’

  Servaz thought for a moment about what the mayor had just said.

  ‘If there is one thing we do learn in this job,’ he said, ‘it is that people are rarely what they seem. And that everyone has something to hide.’

  As he was saying this, he looked into his rear-view mirror, and again witnessed something quite unexpected: Chaperon had gone very pale, and his eyes had filled with pure terror.

  * * *

  Diane came out of the Institute and the icy wind hit her. Fortunately she had put on her down jacket, a rollneck jumper and fur-lined boots. She took out her keys as she walked towards her Lancia. She was relieved to be able to get out of that place for a while. She sat behind the wheel, turned the ignition and heard the click of the starter. The indicator lights came on, then went out again almost at once. Nothing else happened. Shit! She tried again. Same thing. Oh, no! She tried again and again, turning the key over and over. Nothing …

  The battery, she thought. It’s dead.

  Or else it’s the cold.

  She wondered if anyone at the Institute could help her, but a wave of discouragement swept over her. She sat motionless behind the wheel, looking at the buildings through the windscreen. Her heart was pounding for no particular reason. Suddenly she felt very far from home.

  12

  That night, Servaz got a phone call from Alexandra, his ex-wife. It was about Margot. Servaz instantly felt worried. Alexandra told him that their daughter had decided to drop her piano and karate, two things she’d been doing since she was small. She gave no valid reason for her decision, merely said that she would not change her mind.

  Alexandra was distraught. Margot had been different lately. Her mother got the impression that she was hiding something. She was no longer able to talk to her the way she used to. Servaz let his ex-wife vent her feelings, wondering all the while if she hadn’t already unburdened herself to Margot’s stepfather – or had he stayed well out of it? Perfectly aware that he was being petty, Servaz found himself hoping his second idea was correct. ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’ he asked.

  ‘I think she does. But she refuses to talk about it. Which is not like her.’

  Then he asked Alexandra if she had gone through Margot’s belongings. He knew her well enough to know she must have. And as he expected, she had. But she hadn’t found anything.

  ‘Nowadays with all these emails and texts, you can’t see who they’re talking to,’ Alexandra admitted regretfully. ‘I’m worried, Martin. See if yo
u can get more out of her. Perhaps she’ll confide in you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll speak to her. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  But he remembered his daughter’s sad gaze. The shadows under her eyes. And, above all, the bruise on her cheek. He felt the knot in his guts again.

  ‘Thanks, Martin. And how are you doing?’

  He avoided the question and spoke to her about the current investigation, without going into detail. Back when they were married, Alexandra had occasionally had some surprisingly good hunches, or given a new perspective on things.

  ‘A horse and a naked man? That’s really odd. Do you think there will be more?’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ he confessed. ‘But don’t mention it to anyone. Not even your cat burglar,’ he added, refusing, as always, to call the wife-thieving airline pilot by name.

  ‘It makes you think those people must have done something really ugly,’ she said, when he had told her about Lombard and Grimm. ‘And that they did it together. Everyone has something to hide.’

  Servaz nodded in silence. You know what you’re talking about, don’t you? They’d been married for fifteen years. For how many years had she been cheating on him with her pilot? How many times had they used a layover in order to get laid – an appropriate expression for air hostess and captain? And after every flight she came home and went on with her family life as if nothing had happened, and always brought a little present for each of them. Until the day she finally made her decision. To justify herself, she told Servaz that Phil didn’t have nightmares, that he didn’t suffer from insomnia – and that ‘he didn’t live surrounded by dead bodies.’

  ‘Why a horse?’ he asked. ‘What’s the connection?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied indifferently, and he knew what that meant: the time for exchanging ideas about his investigations was in the past. ‘You’re the cop,’ she added. ‘Right, I have to go. Try and talk to Margot.’

  She hung up. When had things started going wrong? When had their paths diverged? Was it when he began spending more and more time at the office and less and less at home? Or was it before that? They had met at university, and were married barely six months later, against her parents’ advice. In those days, when they were still students, Servaz wanted to teach literature and Latin like his father, and write the ‘great contemporary novel’; Alexandra, more modestly, was studying to work in the tourist industry. Then he joined the police force. Officially on a whim, but in truth because of his past.

  It makes you think those people must have done something really terrible. And that they did it together.

  With her quick, non-police mind, Alexandra had put her finger on an essential point. But could Lombard and Grimm have joined forces to commit an act that was likely to incite revenge? It seemed completely improbable to him. And if they had, where did Hirtmann fit in?

  Suddenly something else permeated his thoughts: Margot – was she in some sort of danger? The tightness in his stomach would not go away. He grabbed his jacket and left the room. Down at reception he asked if they had a computer and webcam available somewhere. The receptionist told him they did, and took him to a little meeting room. Servaz thanked her and opened his mobile phone.

  ‘Dad?’ said his daughter.

  ‘Hook up to your webcam,’ he said.

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes, right now.’

  He sat down and got online. After five minutes his daughter had still not contacted him and Servaz was beginning to get impatient, when the notice ‘Margot is connected’ appeared onscreen. Servaz immediately turned on the video and a splinter of blue light flashed above the camera.

  Margot was in her bedroom, a steaming cup in her hand, and she gave him a curious, cautious look. Behind her on the wall was a huge poster for a film called The Mummy, a character with a gun against a background of a desert, sunset and pyramids.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘I should be asking you.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You dropped your piano and karate lessons – why?’

  He realised, a bit late, that his voice was far too curt and his approach too abrupt. It was because he’d been made to wait, obviously, he knew that. He hated waiting. But he should have handled it differently, should have started with a topic that was less urgent, should have made her smile with their usual jokes. A few elementary principles of manipulation – even with his own daughter.

  ‘Oh! So Mum called you…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what else did she tell you?’

  ‘That’s all … Well?’

  ‘Well, it’s very simple: I’ll only ever be a mediocre pianist, so what’s the point going on with it? It’s just not my thing, that’s all.’

  ‘And the karate?’

  ‘I’m sick of it.’

  ‘Sick of it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mm-hmm. Just like that, all of a sudden?’

  ‘No, not all of a sudden: I took my time to think it over.’

  ‘And what do you intend to do instead?’

  ‘I have no idea. Do I have to do something? It seems to me I’ve reached an age where I can decide for myself, right?’

  ‘You could say that,’ he acknowledged, forcing himself to smile.

  But at the other end, his daughter was not smiling. She was staring at the camera and at him, darkly. The lamp next to her lit her face from one side and the bruise on her cheek was even more visible. The piercing in her eyebrow glittered like a real ruby.

  ‘What is it with all these questions? What are you and Mum trying to do to me?’ asked Margot, her voice shriller and shriller. ‘Why do I feel like I’m in the middle of some sort of fucking police interview?’

  ‘Margot, I only asked … and you’re not obliged to—’

  ‘Oh, no? You know what, Dad? If this is the way you go about interrogating your suspects, you must not get too many results.’

  She pounded her fist on the side of the desk and the noise resounded in the loudspeaker and made him jump.

  ‘Shit, bloody fucking hell!’

  He abruptly felt cold inside. Alexandra was right: this was not their daughter’s usual behaviour. What remained to be seen was whether this change was temporary, owing to some circumstances he knew nothing about, or whether it was due to someone else’s influence.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit on edge because of this investigation. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  ‘I’ll see you in two weeks’ time, all right?’

  ‘Will you call me again before then?’

  He smiled to himself. That was more like the Margot he knew.

  ‘Of course I will. Goodnight, sweetheart.’

  ‘Goodnight, Dad.’

  He went back up to his room, tossed his jacket on the bed and took a miniature of Scotch from the minibar. Then he went out onto the balcony. It was almost dark; the sky was clear, somewhat lighter to the west than the east, above the black mass of mountains. A few stars were beginning to come out, as bright as if they’d been scrubbed. Servaz told himself that it was going to get very cold. The Christmas lights formed a flow of glistening lava in the streets, but all this hustle and bustle seemed trivial beneath the eternal gaze of the Pyrenees. Even the most atrocious crimes became insignificant, meaningless, in the presence of the mountains. Scarcely more than an insect crushed on a windscreen.

  Servaz leaned against the railing, and opened his phone again.

  ‘Espérandieu,’ replied his assistant.

  ‘I need to ask you for a favour.’

  ‘What’s going on? Is there anything new?’

  ‘No. It has nothing to do with the investigation.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Servaz struggled with his words.

  ‘I’d like you to tail Margot after school once or twice a week. For, let’s say, two or three weeks. I can’t do it myself: she’d see me.’

>   ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  At the other end of the line, the silence was endless. Servaz could hear noise in the background. His assistant was obviously in a bar.

  Espérandieu sighed.

  ‘Martin, I can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s against all the—’

  ‘I’m asking you a favour, as a friend,’ interrupted Servaz. ‘Just once or twice a week for three weeks. Follow her either on foot or by car. Nothing more. You’re the only person I can ask.’

  Another sigh.

  ‘Why?’ said Espérandieu.

  ‘I think she may be hanging out with the wrong sort of people.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘And that her boyfriend is hitting her.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Servaz. ‘Now just imagine if it were Méghan, and you had to ask me. Besides, you may have to someday.’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll do it. But once or twice a week, no more, agreed? And three weeks from now I quit, even if I haven’t found anything.’

  ‘You have my word,’ said Servaz, relieved.

  ‘What will you do if your suspicions are confirmed?’

  ‘We haven’t got there yet. For the time being, I just want to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘OK, but supposing what you think is true, and she’s shacked up with some violent, twisted little jerk, then what will you do?’

  ‘Am I in the habit of acting impulsively?’ said Servaz.

  ‘On occasion.’

  ‘I just want to find out what’s going on.’

  He thanked his assistant and hung up. He was still thinking about his daughter. About her outfits, her tattoos, her piercings … Then he let his thoughts take him to the Institute. He pictured the buildings up there drifting slowly off to sleep in the snow. What did those monsters dream about at night in their cells? What slippery creatures, what fantasies fed their sleep? He wondered if any of them stayed awake, their eyes looking into a macabre inner world, summoning the memory of their victims.

  High above the mountains an aeroplane flew by, on its way from Spain to France. A tiny silver shaving, a shooting star, a metallic comet, its landing lights twinkling in the night sky, and Servaz once again sensed how isolated this valley was, far away from everything.